


a story cobbled together from impossible moments that never quite fit

by Contra



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 14:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16019819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Contra/pseuds/Contra
Summary: Time Lords, even Renegades, never lie. But sometimes their favourite truth is not the most probable. Or: A collection of things that never happened, but only just (Doctor/Master)





	a story cobbled together from impossible moments that never quite fit

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so,  
> my first Doctor Who fanfic in what might actually be a decade
> 
> Honest question: Are there any active DW LJ writing communities still around?
> 
> This is a story composed of 12 parts that are all drabbles. Have fun.

**I.**

The war was like-

whole planets worth of creatures screaming out in terror, time desperately clinging to something not even resembling itself, every nightmare monster eating every child in every galaxy, reality itself becoming so threadbare that the darkness shone through.

Every Time Lord in battle had his own particular death, screaming out into the mental open wound that had festered in the shared telepathic field. The Doctor heard every one of them, contemplating. When he made his choice, it was through the rottenness that had once been friends.

After the war was-

silence.

And the Doctor screaming in it.

 

**II.**

You can’t scream forever. The Doctor has learnt this lesson over and over again. He doesn’t bother, after the Valiant.

The Master is dead.

For one shameful moment the truth is: He’d rather have the war back than the silence.

He thinks about how easy it would be, ripping the fabric of spacetime wide open, going back in his personal timeline and stopping the bullet with both of his hearts, using his last energy to pull Gallifrey back through the crack.

Instead he sits among survivors and listens to them trying to chatter away a silence they can’t even touch.

 

**III.**

The Doctor is in that fake 1980’s Earth hotel, running through the corridors from the monster.

He’s a few hundred feet ahead of Amy and Rory when he recognizes his door. It smells like a place he thought he’d finally forgotten.

As he opens it, Rory shouts, “Doctor, careful, how does this place work?”

“I don’t know,” a familiar, arrogant, spiteful, beloved voice murmurs from inside the room. “Does it show you your worst fear?”

The Doctor spends a perfect moment just standing there, smiling.

“My worst fear were all the other rooms I’ve walked into, without you in them.”

 

**IV.**

Afterwards, he sometimes tried counting casualties. Not the big ones, Gallifrey, Romana, his children. Just small ones, moments.

With Gearon, there went an incalculable amount of sunsets and he would forever bear the knowledge that centuries ago, he had the chance to watch just one.

He didn’t, preferred to go along with the mad flurry of his life instead, and so no one will ever know the exact angle of light hitting a Gearonian sea that now never existed.

Rose thought it’s something akin to nostalgia, watching at least one sunset wherever they go. He doesn’t tell her it’s mourning.

 

**V.**

There’s a star burning between them, the night they stop being Koschei and Theta. It’s theirs.

“We could run together,” is the last thing Koschei says as Koschei. He’s mad already. He’s a murderer already. His love is an entire reality already and it burns.

Theta has a wife, children and not yet stolen a TARDIS. His blood is aching and singing for the man in front of him. He looks at what they have done and thinks, I want everything, but I don’t want this. It might be a lie.

The last thing Theta says as Theta is “No.”

 

**VI.**

The Master came back different, pulsing with Artron energy, unstable at the edges (heavens know Time Lords have more than enough of those).

“You can’t win,” the Doctor tells him, both hearts bleeding, trying not to sound like he is mad with love. Failing.

The Master smiles with the brilliance of a nuclear bomb.

The next time they meet, he’s got a peace offer, love token, everything that ever stood between them and never could.

“Do you finally understand the things I’d do for you, Doctor?” In his hand, still grasping for her blaster, is a squirming, living Adelaide Brooke.

 

**VII.**

There’s some reality where the Doctor finds the fob watch before Professor Yana can open it. Both of his hearts stop when he recognizes the name on it. He looks at the old man, scrambling to save humanity from the darkness, and loves him with all the might of a choice that’s not his to make.

Like always, he takes it anyway.

(Between this and Gallifrey, this one is worse.)

“Let me see it, Doctor, just once,” the Professor says and means the universe. He dies at sunset, billions of years ago, where everything begins. He found it incredibly beautiful.

 

**VIII.**

Gallifrey assings bonding spouses by compatibility upon finishing the Academy. It’s considered the same as chosing, because it doesn’t even occur to the Time Lords that anyone would ever settle for anything but the perfect logical match.

Koschei, by then, is too disgraced to be considered for anyone. He’s a murderer, liar, this world’s only other true lover.

When he sees the announcement of couples from their year, he thinks of three point five billion ways to make his name appear next to Theta’s. It doesn’t.

There’s another name there.

A part of Theta will forever wish to have run.

 

**IX.**

And then the universe collapses on them.

“You’ve made different choices,” the Master tells him, it’s just the two of them in the TARDIS, and a nice cup of tea. “Somewhere.”

The other man doesn’t answer. Between the two of them, and everything that has ever happened or ever could, there is no need.

“Doctor-“ the Master starts but it only earns him a smile.

“Use my real name now.” They’re both tired. This is the end.

They can feel the impossible void creep up on the TARDIS.

The Master pulls him tight, whispers a word

and it becomes light.

 

**X.**

“This tie is impossible, literally,” River picks it out of the closet. “I like it.”

Their wedding preparation duties are evenly distributed – he picks the sunset, she picks the clothes.

“It was manufactured in a reality that never existed.”

He looks up and his stomach lurches. Of course she can smell the paradox clinging to it.

“Put it back,” his voice is sterner than he wants. He can’t stop the memories bubbling up, the other last Time Lord, dying.

She looks at him and her eyes are older than they should be.

For his wedding, he wears a black tie.

 

**XI.**

They don’t actually talk much on the Valiant. The Doctor is frail and hurt and defiant. The Master has things to do.

He still comes to the Doctor one evening, wearing a soft shirt that, in the orange evening light of the aircraft carrier, almost looks Gallifreyan.

“How could you kill them?” He asks.

The Doctor stays silent.

“You know, when you bonded, I almost went mad.” There is hysteria behind the word almost. “And yet, despite everything, I never could have killed your children.”

The Doctor stays silent forever. The Master leaves.

Jack Harkness dies a lot that night.

 

**XII.**

“Do you think we’ll be able to make stars?” Theta asks. They’re children on Gallifrey, just watched the twin suns set. He often asks these things, Koschei’s answer is always the same.

“We’ll be able to make anything.”

He smiles so brightly that Theta believes him.

They research. Theta says it’s only a star if there’s life, else it’s just a rock. You can’t develop life from not-life, the book says. It has no section on how to make stars.

“One day, the stars will be ours,” they whisper.

Koschei is already counting galaxies. Theta counts how often he smiles.

 


End file.
